Artist Profile

David Lane

Through investigating the ethical character of museums, cultural institutions and public monuments my current art and research is concerned with ideas of culture acting as a value-forming system, creating social hierarchies and cultural divisions. Focusing upon the status of the subject, particularly those marginalised or socially 'ugly' and deemed unworthy of our esteem, I seek to address questions regarding the language of these social structures: What happens to the language of institutional authority when applied to a socially ugly figure? Furthermore, how do we as a society define ugliness? Using my practice as a research tool, I explore these questions through creating quasi-institutional structures that aim to destabilise dominant cultural practices and open up a space for marginalised social groups to occupy and produce counter hegemonic cultural discourses.
My interest in dealing with cultural institutions emerges from projects through which I have sought to draw critical attention to the practices of authoritative institutional structures and their social implications. Dealing with the roles of structures such as the contemporary art institution, the museum or the public monument, I have developed a range of approaches which aim to disturb the conventional homogeneity of these subjects through inserting incongruous elements into them.
The most recent development of these approaches involves me making quasi-museological display cabinets out of refused wood found on Council Estates in South London. Within these economically impoverished façades, I display both items of contemporary desire and items associated with morally contentious acts and social practices, as protected artifacts. Here, I aim to construct a political disparity between an aesthetic of 'lower class' social position and of contemporary societies status inferring structures and commodities. Through this tactic, I aim to play upon cultural tensions regarding desire and social position whilst also alluding to the injustices and contradictions inherent within our most cherished institutions.read full statement

2012 - August 6th 2011 – A Memorial for a Drug Addict and Rioter, The Nelson Rodgers Museum, London2012 - Ugliness and Displacement, Archway - Pop up Space, London

Group exhibitions

2011 - Artistic Parodies of Political Events, The Stanley Picker Gallery - in collaboration with The White Shed Gallery, London2011 - Political Parodies of Artistic Events, The Stanley Picker Gallery - in collaboration with The White Shed Gallery, London